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Functional C++? As opposed to what — dysfunctional? Well, kind of, yeah. Sure, in C++ the principal unit of composition is called a function, but that doesn't mean it's a functional language. And the idea of restricting mutability of state gets a nod with const, but it's a nod not a hug. And the STL shows influences of functional programming, although it falls short of being compositional. And, yes, sure, C++11 introduced lambdas, but then again, these days, which language hasn't? Lambda calculus was invented in the 1930s.

This talk looks at how to express functional programming ideas in (post)modern C++ in a way that can be considered idiomatic to C++, rather than trying to use the power of overloading and meta-programming to pretend C++ is Haskell or Lisp. In short, immutability beyond const and into shared and persistent data structures, concurrency beyond threading and locks, and thinking about functions as transformations and units of composition rather than actions.

Kevlin is an independent consultant and trainer based in the UK. His development interests are in patterns, programming, practice and process. He has been a columnist for various magazines and web sites, including Better Software, The Register, Java Report and the C/C++ Users Journal. Kevlin is co-author of A Pattern Language for Distributed Computing and On Patterns and Pattern Languages, two volumes in the Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture... Read More →